Waiting for the next Jackie
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
One man with courage makes a majority.
Baseball has a history of heroes rising to the fore to save the sport from its self-inflicted woes. Shortly after the 1919 Black Sox scandal, Babe Ruth came forth and swatted like no one ever had to give fans something new to cheer for. In 1947, after decades of tacit discrimination against blacks in the game, Jackie Robinson broke through to show a better way. And now, in the aftermath of a feckless 21-month-long, $20 million investigation into baseball’s performance-enhancing drug problem, the only way for baseball to solve its problem is for another hero of Robinsonian stature to emerge.
The current problem of PEDs is probably more akin to the scourge of racial discrimination than the gambling travesty that occurred in 1919. After all, despite the wide-reaching, undergirding economic problems that were a factor in the game then, the scandal was far from pandemic; indeed, there likely weren’t more than the "eight men out" who were responsible for what happened. Contrast that to the widespread, monolithic problem of discrimination that had gone on for years, at all levels of the sport, in all areas: players, management and fans. And, like today, baseball in the ‘forties was witnessing a popularity boom: By 1946, a year before Robinson entered the scene, total attendance had doubled from two years earlier. Baseball wasn’t exactly hurting financially from its pernicious policies.
And so it is today. Baseball, whose fans hollowly decry the problem yet continue filling MLB’s coffers, carries on with business as usual. Led by a spineless commissioner and gluttonous union, the sport pays lip service to the issue, the culmination of which is Mr. Mitchell’s book report. This combination of an indifferent public and supercilious leaders is, to say the least, not exactly a recipe for change and renewal.
It’s been a while since baseball had a true hero. Sure, we’ve seen plenty of minor heroes, players and others who have stood for the good things about the sport: integrity, competitiveness, honest toil, wondrous feats on the field and selfless acts off it. Many players have been prematurely annointed heros — Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa in 1998, for instance, when their home-run hitting thrilled fans back to the game not long after the labor strike. The most recent premature hero ordination, that of charlatan Rick Ankiel, doubly demonstrates the sport’s utter lack of and dire need for a real hero to rescue the game from its PED bane.
With MLB’s unwillingness to do anything more about PEDs than what is necessary to entice the public to smile and move on, the integrity of the game has degenerated before our eyes. It has happened so fast that fans haven’t even had time to morally process the ramifications. Some fans were turned off when the first rumors of steroids were heard. Others took a wait-and-see approach, giving the benefit of the doubt to Mssrs. McGwire and Sosa, et al. And still others have naively believed the innocent pleas by players and ernest-sounding pledges by baseball officials that they were sincere about the problem, despite no support in reality and much evidence to the contrary. It has left those of us who feel that we have no choice — either repress what we know in our hearts and minds about the game today and support (both financially and emotionally) the players who repulse us and their enabling henchmen, or turn away from the game that has turned its back on us. For people who have been fans of the game for any period of time, it’s an unhappy and unconfortable dilemma. It’s 2007 now, and our eyes have been opened, and it’s embarrassing to pretend anymore.
Yet we hold out hope that the game may change. With unclear disciplinary measures and "education" solutions that are self-evidently insufficient, we again look for a hero in the game. But from which ranks would such a savior come? While baseball has seen courageous commissioners guide it through each of the its worst gambling scandals — the bold and fearless Kenesaw Mountain Landis and Bartlett Giamatti took control and did what was in the best interests of the game to preserve its integrity — a change of that sort is unlikely and won’t have the same kind of bottom-up impact that a player would.
When the moral problem in baseball was racial discrimination, Robinson (and, certainly, Branch Rickey) rose up to truly change the baseball, despite much resistance within the game and outside it. Robinson succeeded because he, as his wife Rachel said, "felt that the end goal was so critical that there was no question that he would do it." If there were a player in the game today who viewed cheating via PEDs as similarly serious blight, what could he do to help end it?
So far, all of the debate on cleaning up the sport has focused on detection — finding out the guilty parties — rather than prevention. The solution, it would seem, would be in a positive approach: Someone voluntarily willing to do all he can to prove that he is clean. Whereas baseball didn’t — and couldn’t — round up all of the bigots back in the late ‘forties but instead had someone step forward and demonstrate a better way — and in doing so, gradually put the bigots out of business — baseball today can’t possibly extricate itself of all of its PED users and enablers, even if it wanted to. But if a player — a star player — were to step across the union line and announce that he would undergo scrunity of the most intense kind in order to show that baseball players could hold themselves to a higher standard, we might witness the beginning of real change.
To be sure, being the first would be the hardest. While it would take much courage from a player to be the first to publicly come out and demonstrate utter transparency — we can imagine the blacklisting and scorn from the players and the union, not to mention some backward-thinking journalists and fans — the impact would be felt now but even moreso as the years pass. Just as it took time for other blacks to join Robinson in the majors, one man might have to stand alone for a while and take the heat. The next Jackie will, like he did, possess a unique combination of both physical skill and mental and emotional strength.
But imagine for a moment: What if a player — we’ll take Albert Pujols, as an example, since he has already publicly pronounced that he could be tested “every day” — called a press conference next week to say that he wasn’t going to wait for the Players’ Union and MLB to figure out a new collective-bargaining agreement and was going to submit himself to a battery of tests from the world’s top doctors and researchers to prove as best as he could that he was clean. What kind of pressure would that put on his fellow teammates, as well as players across the league? How fast would the rampant PED use in baseball shrivel up into a little corner and be looked upon with scorn, perhaps even the way racist attitudes are today? And think about the effect it would have on the nation’s youth. You can’t buy that kind of education with any number of prime-time, million-dollar TV ads pontificating that "steroids are bad for you."
Does such a player — another Robinson — exist in Major League Baseball today? We’re not sure. But we’re not trusting that change is going to just happen, certainly not on account of the Mitchell Report. Baseball needs a hero. We’re waiting for the next Jackie.
December 14th, 2007 at 3:32 pm
But does baseball want or need a hero?
I’d argue of the three moral scandals that you present, the only one that truly threatened the game, was the black sock scandal. That was the only scandal that put into question the integrity of the competition on the field. Think about it: Baseball or any professional sport’s business model requires true competition on the field. If the competition isn’t real, the game is reduced to a stage or screen production. The season would be something akin to a scripted drama or professional wrestling. That is why gambling is such a sin in professional sports, while cheating is not. (Just ask Pete Rose and Gaylord Perry.)
As much of a moral outrage as discrimination, racism or segregation was, there was never any question the players of the field wanted to win; the same can be said for the steroids era. And unlike segregation, where the level of competition was reduced, there is little doubt that PEDs in baseball have increased the level of competition. This is the real reason why it was encouraged, not so much by the commissioner’s office or by the players union, but by the fans. I surmise that the average fan wants a winner, clean or not. In 1998 was there a doubt in your mind about whether McGwire was on PEDs? Did you care? How many fans wax nostalgically about the 1970s and 1980s when the average baseball player was about as big as So Taguchi (5’11” 170#) and Willie “Pops” Stargell was considered a big man at 6’2”, 220#?
Sorry, I believe the average casual fan neither wants nor needs a hero.